15 November 2013
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Coming Home
From tomorrow, 16 November, until 22 November 2013, archives in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales are holding a range of talks
From tomorrow, 16 November, until 22 November 2013, archives in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales are holding a range of talks and events, and online and in-house exhibitions to highlight their collections.
Local, university, business, specialist and national archives throughout the UK and Ireland are inviting the public to experience, understand and take pride in the wealth and variety of material held in archives as part of a brand new campaign, Explore Your Archive.
Explore Your Archive highlights the essential and inspiring role of archives and brings to life some of the individuals, tales and adventures waiting to be explored in archives throughout the UK and Ireland.
The campaign aims to encourage the public to discover the stories that are at the heart of their communities and their identities. It will inspire new visitors to visit archives to share the excitement and passion of finding unique treasures, historical records and artefacts.
Joanne Fitton, Special Collections Manager, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds said: 'Archives are unlike a museum or gallery where the collections are presented – archives are there for individuals to explore the collections for themselves and find the information or stories which inspire them. The thrill of discovery is at the heart of this campaign.'
Exploreyourarchive.org, the public website for the campaign, includes features such as an archive locator with an interactive map, a live twitter feed promoting Explore Your Archive activities and a video gallery featuring the campaign’s ambassadors. Go take a look!
‘Coming Home from the Front Line’ is the National Railway Museum’s exhibition on wartime ambulance trains – through oral histories, photographs and drawings of ambulance trains, nurses, soldiers, operating rooms, poison cupboards, padded cell compartments and much more. Part of the Explore Your Archive campaign.
Nurses with an ambulance train at Liverpool station, 1916. Ambulance trains were used during the First World War in France and Belgium to transport wounded or sick soldiers to hospital. This train was on display in several stations in Lancashire and Yorkshire before being taken to the Western Front.
The Mayor of Huddersfield with nurses next to an ambulance train at Huddersfield station, West Yorkshire, 17 November 1917.
Title page ‘Exhibition of Ambulance Train Constructed by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway to the order of the War Office for the use of Troops in France’ produced by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and the Centre of the St Johns Association, John AF Aspinall, General Manager, 1914-1918.
Ambulance train number 18, Pharmacy carriage treatment room. The sparsely equipped treatment room seen here with two of the nurses who work within its confines.